Island escape a daydream come true for architect

Trisha Croaker

From the Drawing Board: Island escape

Master Bedroom to swimming pool and outdoor shower.

Sweet dreams are made of this. One rain-soaked, woolly day in Sydney last winter, the architect Renato D'Ettorre and I were sitting in his studio devouring images of a sun-drenched house in the tropics.

Evocatively named Azuris, this is the sort of place most of us only dream about.

It's pure home beautiful porn, and on that drizzly bad-tempered day, it was a welcome reminder of summer, of scented breezes, sapphire seas - and architecture perfectly designed for Australia's relaxed coastal lifestyle.

On an idyllic spot on Hamilton Island, it was the second in a pair of houses D'Ettorre designed for a once-in-a-lifetime overseas client.

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The first, Solis, was completed in 2010 as the client's home-away-from-home, with Azuris added last year to accommodate family.

The brief was for a low-maintenance house with three bedrooms. Overlooking the Coral Sea, local waterways, and Plum Pudding Island, and on a site covered in eucalypts, mangrove swamp and ''a lot of wildlife'', it had to be site-sensitive and respectful of resident flora and fauna.

D'Ettorre says it was essential that the design be all about ''easy living''.

''Holiday houses are designed on different principles - they're about breaking away from traditional living, about being able to pare down to the essentials.''

D'Ettorre adopted this approach in every instance, keen to keep it as a ''raw structure''.

Materials were restricted to stone, concrete and glass, chosen for their rawness and transparency respectively, enabling the structure to ''disappear'' into the landscape and withstand the island's subtropical humidity, intense sunlight and torrential downpours.

''We chose a simple palette that didn't compete with the outdoors or views, one that was very relaxed, with nothing opulent or reflective. Materials that pick up the language of sand and site.''

The house needed to be a refuge but not a ''bunker'', so concrete was used on key supporting walls only, and on ceilings, roof and floor slabs - with as many walls as possible being fully operable glass. On approach, the house is visible as a green roof planted with native species, encouraging visitors to bypass the human-made in favour of the horizon.

On entry, living and sleeping spaces are divided over three levels, stepping down to the west and the sea, with internal areas wrapped around pools, ponds and courtyards.

D'Ettorre says he shied away from any ''hard demarcation'' of rooms, opting for a more relaxed fluidity of multi-dimensional spaces.

The result is a house that appears to seamlessly connect indoor and outdoor, where spaces meld, and in which occupants enjoy the gentle ebb and flow of sunlight, breezes, and water in, around or through the house all times of the day and night.

Dream site, dream client, dream brief. Nirvana for an architect and a joyous outcome for the client.